Map-Wide "Blinds"/Stuns (Mirage, Excal, etc.) need NPC Counterplay

[tripletriple]

32 minutes ago, Gurpgork said:

The same could be said, if Mag was anywhere in the ballpark as good as Mirage outside of Corpus missions. They nerfed an augment. Mag was considered worthless by the majority of the playerbase without a feature that isn't even a part of her base kit. Sure, Pull is reasonably good for CC, and Bullet Attractor certainly has its uses, but they aren't good enough to make Mag competitive most of the other frames outside of a Corpus mission (and comparison to Mirage, who has HoM, Eclipse, and freaking Prism, just isn't even fair). Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse, on the other hand, make Mirage extremely competitive with pretty much every frame. She might not have the most raw DPS in the game, but she has insane AoE that comes with her DPS. Not to mention that Hall of Mirrors, on top of its incredible AOE DPS, also lets Mirage avoid almost any attack from just about anything that isn't a Napalm or a Scorch.

Mirage would be in a really good spot even if Prism got flat out removed. To be perfectly clear, I am not advocating Prism's utter removal from the game, but Mirage would be extremely powerful even if she couldn't outright disable enemy AI like she can right now with Prism. Mag, on the other hand, wasn't particularly strong even before the Greedy Pull nerf, unless you were playing Corpus. So no, the same can't be said for Mag.

You are kidding right? Mag was an absolute power house with greedy pull. Sure she wasn't the best in infested mission (although still contributing) , but even in the void she was a monster. I regularly topped the damage and kills chart in void mission, all while providing amazing cc (because of the practically infinite energy), energy to my team and a place to redirect bullets quick.

Greedy pull didn't make mag, it completed her. In fact, some people considered mag one of the most powerful frames in the game before this. She was so strong you didn't see as many trinitiy's before. 

Not to mention she could use her augments to great effect. Rooting enemies in place with crush and letting your teammates deal with fewer enemies at a time. You don't see it now but balance is a finicky thing. One second it's overpowered the next second it's under powered.  Mirage is not immune to that. Without her blind, I can take other warframes that will contribute more. 

 

 

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

Or just keep mirage as is and let disruptor drones spawn in grineer missions. You can't afk in nightmare LoR, mirage or not.

[DatDarkOne]

6 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

The real issue here isn't that the blind duration or range is too long-- it's that enemies are completely helpless when they can't see their target.

Enemies need to react more intelligently to targets that they can't see: they should shoot blindly at noises (already in the game, but needs improvement); they should shoot blindly/toss grenades at the source of the Blind if they don't hear anything during the initial stun; they should attack blindly in the direction of things that damage them; etc..

All I could think when reading this was how Flashbangs work in real life.  When used properly, they can leave enemies helpless.  

Edited April 10, 2016 by DatDarkOne
removed word

[akira_him]

I would say make MirrorBall needs LoS, not because it is OP but for the sake of consistency to radial blind

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

10 hours ago, Magneu said:

I mean, I play Chroma, so it's like...2-3 seconds to kill those guys? Melee master race.

But yeah, armor scaling is out of control, and if you get hit with the enhanced armor condition, hoo boy you better have brought your CP. I feel like armor should be 40-50% of what it is now to allow at least some level of fairness.

Funnily Enough, CP is nerfed to 50% versus armor-augmented enemies, so even with 4 CPs, you're still gonna have a bad day.  You know what still instantly strips 100% of even augmented armor?  Armor strip-capable abilities modded to 100% of greater.

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

6 hours ago, Sold0ut said:

I completely disagree with that. If the range should stay, it needs something like a cooldown to go with it. As it is, Radial Javelin Excal is just as broken. There's a reason it's taken on Draco. As soon as anything is even SLIGHTLY on the visible part of the map it's permablinded, no more gameplay.

Umn, dude, Radial Javelin doesn't blind.  Radial Blind does..... but....

[shut]

23 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

All I could think when reading this was how Flashbangs work in real life.  When used properly, they can leave enemies helpless.  

Well, yeah, obviously. Realism is nice, but this is a video game, and enjoyable gameplay is more important than realism.

[DatDarkOne]

3 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

Well, yeah, obviously. Realism is nice, but this is a video game, and enjoyable gameplay is more important than realism.

You know this statement just pretty much countered your original argument, right.  I say this because enjoyable gameplay is subjective to each player.  

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

5 hours ago, Gurpgork said:

But Mirage has Eclipse and Hall of Mirrors. Those two factors alone are enough to make Mirage a top-tier frame. Prism is a broken ability on an already very strong Warframe. She doesn't need Prism to have a reason to exist.

Hell no.  This is just a lazy impatient excuse.  NO frame should have useless abilities to begin with, and making more abilities totally useless is NOT the way to fix that.

Every single ability should exist for a REASON.  PERIOD.

It should be LoS, everyone agrees.  The duration is fine, and the range is fine.  Enemy A.I. always needs more improvement, so that's a solid fix.  If you want to nerf the range of the blind though, it needs to be useful outside of the blind, and with enemy armor and resistance auras the way they are, the AoE DoT nature of sustained Prism is just terrible, and needs a buff to be useful.

TBH the damage on Prism isn't completely terrible, but if it is hitting all the enemies in range/LoS already, the excess lasers should focus on the closest enemies, rather than just being lost.  That alone would probably make it a decent damaging ability.  As-is at higher levels (even the sortie 1 missions) it just straight up won't even damage enemies significantly.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Vitalis_Inamorta

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

5 hours ago, Gurpgork said:

The same could be said, if Mag was anywhere in the ballpark as good as Mirage outside of Corpus missions. They nerfed an augment. Mag was considered worthless by the majority of the playerbase without a feature that isn't even a part of her base kit. Sure, Pull is reasonably good for CC, and Bullet Attractor certainly has its uses, but they aren't good enough to make Mag competitive most of the other frames outside of a Corpus mission (and comparison to Mirage, who has HoM, Eclipse, and freaking Prism, just isn't even fair). Hall of Mirrors and Eclipse, on the other hand, make Mirage extremely competitive with pretty much every frame. She might not have the most raw DPS in the game, but she has insane AoE that comes with her DPS. Not to mention that Hall of Mirrors, on top of its incredible AOE DPS, also lets Mirage avoid almost any attack from just about anything that isn't a Napalm or a Scorch.

Mirage would be in a really good spot even if Prism got flat out removed. To be perfectly clear, I am not advocating Prism's utter removal from the game, but Mirage would be extremely powerful even if she couldn't outright disable enemy AI like she can right now with Prism. Mag, on the other hand, wasn't particularly strong even before the Greedy Pull nerf, unless you were playing Corpus. So no, the same can't be said for Mag.

Pure Bull.  Banshee's Sonar alone would do literally everything Mirage does, and better, if Prism were removed.  The same goes for Chroma, who would do pretty much everything better than Mirage if Prism were removed.  Rhino?  Check.  Nyx?  Check.  Excalibur?  Check.  Pretty much every other frame in the game outside of Limbo/Hydroid/Zephyr?  Check.

There's exaggeration, and then there's raging into blatantly wrong claims.  Claiming that Mirage would still be in a "good spot" even without prism at all is just straight up wrong.

#Notamirageplayer.

[shut]

17 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

You know this statement just pretty much countered your original argument, right.  I say this because enjoyable gameplay is subjective to each player.  

What I meant is that enjoyable gameplay is important, and balance is very important for enjoyable gameplay. The entire point of this thread is that cheesing through missions by blinding everything makes for very, very boring gameplay.

 

And yeah, I totally get that it's all subjective and that many players (including yourself) don't see "enjoyable gameplay" the same way that I do. I'm speaking for the overall health of the game, though. I've played quite a few games where power creep led to players trivializing content, and with the devs responding by releasing beefed-up, gimmicky, ability-ignoring enemies rather than simply nerfing what was overpowered. I've seen these games grow, and I've seen these games slowly wither and die partly because of the devs not addressing these issues properly. I don't want the same to happen to WF.

It's all too common for players to request that they stay nice and overpowered in games, only to get bored and quit (causing the games to dwindle and die) after the novelty of being a god wears off.

Edited April 10, 2016 by SortaRandom

[Guest]

NO LoS please. Excalibur's radial blind is now useless as fk. I can't even do a proper revive just because a small group of enemies managed to not get blinded even though they are right in front of me. Fk no.

[DatDarkOne]

@SortaRandom Now that was a damn good post.  I can't help but to give you respect for it.  

[--RV--LadySpiderwick]

On 4/8/2016 at 6:34 AM, letir said:

Old Excal used to do the same, he was nerfed with LoS. Just use same solution for the same skills.

When people mod for more range that does happen, nerfing the rage makes the push to add even more range an

The fact they afk'd using Prism makes the rest of us Mirage players look bad. Not everyone does that. I always move around and contribute to the fighting when I'm using blind Mirage build.

[letir]

3 hours ago, LittleArachnid said:

When people mod for more range that does happen, nerfing the rage makes the push to add even more range an

The fact they afk'd using Prism makes the rest of us Mirage players look bad. Not everyone does that. I always move around and contribute to the fighting when I'm using blind Mirage build.

And i don't use Mirage at all. They still haunting Sorties and make everything cakewalk.

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

5 hours ago, letir said:

And i don't use Mirage at all. They still haunting Sorties and make everything cakewalk.

Ehh, they don't necessarily do a lot on corpus sorties (nullifiers, nullifiers EVERYWHERE!) but they can make the other ones pretty effortless.  To be fair, infested at sortie level aren't hard to deal with even without mirage (that april fools though... that got pretty crazy, going for, what, an hour and starting at level 100?), they DO have CC reducing disruptor ancients though, so if you let them stack up all the sudden your CCs will last about 0.5 seconds.  Grineer don't have those disruptor drones in play yet, but those would pretty much fix it for the Grineer.

[RealPandemonium]

13 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

What I meant is that enjoyable gameplay is important, and balance is very important for enjoyable gameplay. The entire point of this thread is that cheesing through missions by blinding everything makes for very, very boring gameplay.

 

And yeah, I totally get that it's all subjective and that many players (including yourself) don't see "enjoyable gameplay" the same way that I do. I'm speaking for the overall health of the game, though. I've played quite a few games where power creep led to players trivializing content, and with the devs responding by releasing beefed-up, gimmicky, ability-ignoring enemies rather than simply nerfing what was overpowered. I've seen these games grow, and I've seen these games slowly wither and die partly because of the devs not addressing these issues properly. I don't want the same to happen to WF.

It's all too common for players to request that they stay nice and overpowered in games, only to get bored and quit (causing the games to dwindle and die) after the novelty of being a god wears off.

You can't argue with the tide of players for whom "fun" means "winning without effort or interaction."  There are now too many players who started playing after the powercreep went out of control and never knew a Warframe that was remotely balanced.  As soon as they throw out the "but unbalanced is fun for me" argument it immediately becomes an "us vs you," "majority rules" argument that neither side can really justify.

[DatDarkOne]

I'm starting to wonder how many of the people that complain about things in Warframe actually contribute any funding to the Devs of the game.  I'm of the mind that if you are getting something for free, then you can't say @#$%.  If you have invested interest, then you have a right to say something.  Just playing devil's advocate here.  :D

[Magneu]

2 hours ago, DatDarkOne said:

I'm starting to wonder how many of the people that complain about things in Warframe actually contribute any funding to the Devs of the game.  I'm of the mind that if you are getting something for free, then you can't say @#$%.  If you have invested interest, then you have a right to say something.  Just playing devil's advocate here.  :D

I won't disclose how much money I've spent on Warframe over the years, but it's damn near (or over) four digits (sorry, I really like this game. Only game I've every paid money for besides stuff like Payday 2 DLC on sale). It's already been established that the amount of money you've spent shouldn't correlate to your opinion being more valid in the game, else only Founders would be on Design Council (which, from my experience, is more and more untrue as time goes on), and only Founders would be allowed to make suggestions/have their suggestions heard.

People aren't just complaining. We're annoyed and concerned that a single frame shuts down a core gameplay aspect (enemies fighting back) with minimal risk and even less effort, thereby making it so other people can't play the full game, or even use their frame fully (Nyx and Chroma, or anyone using Rage for energy). Prism spam invalidates a massive portion of the game, and the only counter is a broken enemy, namely Nullifiers (you could argue Scrambus/Comba, but they appear once in a blue moon).

It seems preachy, but the opinion that we need game balance for a better long term, enjoyable, "everything is viable (except for starter gear)" game is perfectly valid, and should be considered alongside the "Tenno are god-warriors who strike down all they face" (which is why I play melee Chroma).

^{Yes I know you said you're playing devil's advocate, but I just needed to get that out there.}

[DatDarkOne]

Thank you Magneu.  I agree with what you posted.  I just like to make people think and be conscience of why they are saying something.  That's the reason for the Devil's Advocate part.  :D

[Ziegrif]

Give the enemies cool aviator shades!

Or just do the easy thing and remove blind mechanic from Prism until a better idea can be implemented.

Mirage has enough toys as is. Def Map wide disable is a bit too much and has been too much for a long while now.

[Magneu]

5 hours ago, Ziegrif said:

Give the enemies cool aviator shades!

Or just do the easy thing and remove blind mechanic from Prism until a better idea can be implemented.

Mirage has enough toys as is. Def Map wide disable is a bit too much and has been too much for a long while now.

I just imagined a lancer with blacked out terminator glasses grinning to himself and almost spat out my coffee. Brilliant.

Blind is kind of part of the "personality" of Prism; I feel as though it should stay, in some form. What if Prism radiation procced (at a high/guarenteed percent) all the enemies that its lasers touched (with a lower chance to inflict a fire proc), and upon detonation, ragdolled the enemies it was currently attached too? It can currently target 20 enemies; upping the number to 30 seems fair to me, allowing for (a) widespread soft CC, making enemies fight each-other, and (b) pretty awesome hard CC, ragdolling up to 30 enemies away in a massive radius (Prism would need to target heavies first to be most effective). Base energy cost should be reduced to 6-8 e/s to allow for it to have more up-time, and base damage may need to be adjusted.

This would give Mirage strong CC, while removing the uber-cheese we currently have of shutting down half of the game. Her 1 and 3 already give her DPS, dodge capabilities, and synergy with certain weapons (*coughcoughSynoidSimulor*), while her 2 (while not the greatest), is pretty fricking useful anywhere with energy-granting gates that block all enemies, shutting down enemies trying to lockout consoles, allowing lockers to eat people (AFAIK, it scales with finisher damage based on total health), elemental procs based on ammo drops (debatedly useful, less so if you use a bullet hose; also requires the augment I think).

Mirage doesn't "need" the current, insane, broken CC Prism grants as of right now. She's a glass cannon that can deal incredible damage, and can dodge most anything but AOE (which all frames are susceptible to), hit the damage reduction cap of 95% in shadow, and hit just shy of 600% additional weapon damage (highest in the game by a decent margin, with a quarter less duration and a third of the energy cost of the next best, Vex Armor). She's also one of the fastest warframes, with enhanced advanced maneuver capabilities.

She only "needs" Prism if you playstyle is hitting one button over and over while eating a sandwich.

Sorry for hijacking your post, Ziegrif, but saying that Mirage has enough toys reminded me of people who claim the blind is necessary for Mirage to function.

[Vrcross]

Prism is just one ability on a long list that need some kind of nerf. Prism needs Los and a range nerf on the blind. It is obviously too powerful. Abilities like prism, chaos, radial disarm, and radial blind all need nerfs most likely in the range department.

The problem of those abilities and their like is their low opportunity cost. The abilities are plainly too energy efficient allowing them to override enemy threat completely with too little investment. The problem is not in their energy costs either, but rather how they are/can be modded for. Due to their high base ranges, and lack of need of power strength and duration, they can exploit the game's modding system unlike abilities like bastille or stomp. Prism and the like don't have to compensate for overextended, and that is where their overpoweredness originates. They get complete map control for a mere 25 energy when modded specifically for these abilities with no conflicting factors.

Vauban, for example, has to consider power strength for how many enemies he wants to capture in bastille and also weigh how much duration he needs before the ability becomes too costly to repeatedly cast. If you ever play the Law of retribution as both mirage and vauban, this disparity becomes clear. As an experiment run the raid 2 times. Once with mirage as your primary crowd control without vauban present and once with vauban as your primary crowd control with no mirage present. Both can lock down the map, but the reason mirage is more commonly used over vauban becomes clear. Prism is much easier to manage. Mirage will rarely notice her energy depleting while Vauban will be desperately pleading with the trinity for more energy should she ever stumble finding enemies to target. Running max range and max efficiency takes a toll on bastille whereas it does not on prism's blind. Mirage's blind  is so powerful that with plates and a partner (probably loki or nova) I could 2 man the raid if the game would let me. That is a problem. 

The game contains many powerful modding options, and while some frames/abilities are balanced around modding capabilities, some are not. This has not really been a problem recently because the new frames seem to have their power level designed with possible modding configurations in mind. These older abilities (room wide crowd control abilities in particular) need a balance pass with available mods in mind. Now this doesn't mean these abilities/frames need direct nerfs, but rather changes which give the player more building conflicts when modding the frames in question like giving radial disarm a duration or enemy limit so that these abilities can't ignore the consequences of corrupted mods.

Tl;dr abilities like prism have too low of a modding cost for their power level leading to low risk high reward game play which removes the difficulty and depth of the game

[--RV--LadySpiderwick]

On 4/10/2016 at 7:22 PM, letir said:

And i don't use Mirage at all. They still haunting Sorties and make everything cakewalk.

Then lets go hating on other builds then? 

Shame on the people using the blind build in a way that just makes every other player look like crap. When I used them in the sorties I use prism to aid my teammates by blinding the enemies giving them time to capture zones and to take out enemies that are threatening them. I may also use sleight of hand to turn the doors against the enemy and having additional damage dealt to them. And for myself, hall of mirrors and ecclipse to be more durable on the field. It takes real experience using her blind build properly and not simply spamming prism all the time. 

[EmptyDevil]

Need that Prism LoS nerf, DE.